"… a queer-looking party that assembled on the bank …"
Wonderland, Tomorrowland and other delusions of grandeur
Hi!!
Welcome to a bunch of new readers! There’s been a wave of subscriptions in the last months (thanks No Tags!) and I think I got intimidated (*blush, blush*). Anyway, after a lil pause, this month’s essay discusses Tomorrow Land Alpe d’Huez (16th-23rd of March), a festival that flies people from all over the world to party on melting mountains. It’s an elite event that locals can barely afford and, as you’ll find out, some of them are not so happy about the whole thing.
Also, some personal news from me below, since (as those of you who are new here will soon discover for themselves), I am both introverted and egocentric. (Not an unusual combination amongst the species commonly known as “DJs”!! Huhu, there’s a reason so many dating app profiles apparently ask for “no DJs please”.)
Anyway, I’m organizing an all-nighter in Berlin (see what I mean?) and will be travelling over Spring and Summer. A reminder that I don’t fly, so help in making the routing more coherent and fit in shows or workshops is always very much appreciated.
For now, no more self-promotion/self-deprecating jokes. Let’s get on to some proper work, get together and fight the colonial-capitalist system! *raises fist in the air*
A final thank you to my dear friend Sarj for proofreading this newsletter! Sarj is the sweetest soul, has many many talents and currently needs work, follow them on Substack and Instagram.
Happy Spring, friends. Choose your queer parties wisely and now + forever Free Palestine!!
xx
Nono
MUSIC: two rooms, two moods!
It’s true, I do enjoy doing the silly little thing which consists in playing pre-recorded tunes to people, so here’s a tangible proof in the form of digital mixes.
High energy ?
Here is an excerpt of the Fictions party we organized in Sameheads in October. Aasana, Gonsher, Soa420 and myself played b2b all night, which was very fun indeed. Shouts to all the regulars and the dancers!
Soft energy?
I recorded a one-hour show at Egregore when I visited Toulouse earlier this month. Ambient, slow, r&b and mellow moods and the podcast should be on their Soundcloud soon.
Both include some dubstep, which is onto its maybe 5th revival? And I’m here for it.
Wonderland, Tomorrowland and other delusions of grandeur
`Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day!’ says Alice after falling into Wonderland.
She goes on: “And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, THAT'S the great puzzle!”
A friend recently told me she was having a lot of fun reading for her son before bed. She recommended I indulge in children’s literature myself, as she thought my “inner child” might currently be in need of attention. Funnily enough, I’d just put Lewis Caroll’s novel on my fiction list, having come across it in a theoretical text about “scale”. What a read! It’s poetic, it’s funny and it’s obviously pretty trippy.
During her adventures, Alice’s size varies: she gets bigger, then smaller. At some point she finds herself drowning in a “pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high.” (The child, teenager and adult in me all shrieked in unison, as tears have been regular companions in the last weeks!)
Size and scale are a regular topic of conversation at the intersection between culture and sustainability. The argument that small-scale independent events may be more sustainable, resilient and socially equitable is one I have made several times via this newsletter myself (for 2023 and 2022).
A few weeks ago, I was having a conversation with Camel, a member of the Stop Tomorrowland Alpe d’Huez campaign. Founded in 2005, the Belgian festival Tomorrowland has extended its monstrous empire to places like Brazil, Atlanta (in the US) and, now, the French Alps. A group of local organizations joined forces to protest against this event, one that Camel described as a “delusion of grandeur”.
On the campaign’s website, 5 reasons are listed to underline the absurdity of the event:
Social justice, inclusivity and accessibility: During our call, Camel said that the lowest ticket prices started at 175e for one day without skiing going all the way up to 7000e for the one-week all-inclusive formula. On the website: “Live Today, Love Tomorrow, Unite Forever: a strong slogan for the festival, inspiring uplifting values of inclusivity and solidarity. But what kind of unity are we really talking about here? Between whom and whom?”
Economic: The idea that the event brings money to locals is called into question, the subsidies received by the event are also vehemently criticized and ultimately, the campaign asks “Against a backdrop of ecological catastrophe, is mindless economic growth desirable?”
Culture: The economic argument takes priority over the artistic one and the local scene is entirely excluded from the program and the experience.
Democracy: There was no citizen consultation in the process of setting up the event.
Environment: “According to Extinction Rebellion, if we include all car travel, festival logistics and (over)consumption during the festival (energy, food, accommodation...), the event’s carbon footprint is comparable to the yearly footprint of all the residents of Alpe d'Huez. It's also greater than the average annual carbon emissions of over 50,000 people in Uganda.”
A large part of the environmental footprint of the festival is related to the audience’s mobility. This aspect is also related to social justice, as it means the event isn’t catered for the local population. According to Camel, one tonne of emitted CO2e is responsible for 50kg of ice melting. All the more heartbreaking when one lives in an area where the disappearance of glaciers is witnessed firsthand. Maybe Burning Man or Pitch Festival attendees experience floods or fires at the occasional event, but for locals, climate crisis is a daily reality.
The model of Destination Festivals (which I’ve also questioned in previous newsletters) pits extractive tourism against local culture. I wonder if, in the future, we might witness more resistance from local inhabitants. The issue here is not only one of size, it’s also one of power dynamic. Who is culture (or travel) for, and why?
The number of attendees at an event might not be the only criterion necessary to calculate its carbon emissions or wider environmental and social impacts. Small-capacity events gathering high-emitting elites in luxurious settings might be much more harmful than larger events aimed at a broader audience. But is there an optimum audience size (or scale) at which an event will be as “neutral” as possible? What would the threshold be, and how could it be justified? Perhaps, most importantly, what do we want out of these collective experiences?
In a recent No Tags interview, Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson reflected on the size of Dweller, the festival she co-organizes: “I try and imagine Dweller as an [EDM mega-festival] Electric Zoo or something like this, on an EDM-scale capacity – what would this be, you know? And I just don't think it would translate to that scale actually. So whilst it might be an interesting concept to some to make it a huge, huge thing, I don't think it could retain the same thing that it has. Even last year, there was lots of talk about how many white people were at the festival, so imagine doing an EDM-scale one – we've definitely lost our core audience! So you've got to really be thinking about these things.”
In its research program on scale, ICI suggested that “queer practices and aesthetics often engage with downscale, small, and ‘cheap’ as forms of resistance against normative, grand, upscale and large. All these attempts evoke humbler, marginal perspectives that risk getting lost in macro-political templates, but - rather than veering towards parochialism - they share the potential for larger social transformation that Deleuze and Guattari theorize with their notions and ‘micro-politics’.”
Whilst scaling up is a risk, we could also ask if it is possible for huge festivals, in the form that we currently know them in, to down-scale. The Stop Tomorrowland campaign does not think that the festival can be transformed in a sustainable way, and it advocates for its disappearance altogether. In an article published in Nectart, Gwendolenn Sharp wrote about the ginormous French metal festival Hellfest: “Like the ever-bigger, ever-brighter cruise liners carrying ever more passengers across the seas, (it) embodies this frantic race for gigantism, the ecological impact of which is far from negligible.” She wonders, if “festivals could change their software”?
Spring hasn’t even properly started in the Northern Hemisphere. Yet the festival season has been all booked and announced since … last year! The software seems stubborn. Sometimes, I feel like Alice: tiny and overwhelmed. I look at my modest plans for the months ahead and I think: “They were indeed a queer-looking party that assembled on the bank — the birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close to them, and all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable.”
Important message:
Whenever i've been asked to do so, i've really enjoyed playing all night long. Yet FICTIONS was always about empowering other talents, so it didn't feel quite right to center myself at the party.
As 2024 has not been playing by the rules so far, I’ve finally decided to indulge myself in 10h non stop of my music collection. For a while i've felt like there is something i'd like to express and I don’t know how else than in this space, with that crowd and with my records.
I know I often say this but it's also often true: this might be a special one :)
It would mean a lot to me if you could RAttend the event. and if you could join! (As a reward, swipe for an Ocean’s 11 referencing meme).
May the 4th be with us.
Shows:
16.03: Zenner, Berlin, DE 🇩🇪
This is tonight ! A new club and a cool line-up.
28.03: Fictions Show, Cashmere Radio, Berlin, DE 🇩🇪
I’ll be hosting my show live from the Cashmere HQ in Wedding. We usually have a potluck with friends and Naga will be back so let us know if you’d like to join.
13.04: Meta, Marseille 🇫🇷
Been dreaming of playing there and heard really good things!! Looking forward to playing weird.
04.05: All Night Long, Samheads, Berlin, DE 🇩🇪
This is the one : 10pm til late don’t hesitate!!
08.05/11.05: Workshop + Panel + DJ set, Nuits Sonores, Lyon, FR 🇫🇷
On Wednesday i’ll be hosting a workshop and talk on panel. Then on Saturday, I’m playing with Abadir and Amor Satyr!
I was supposed to go to Portugal in May. I currently have a job that requires me to stay in Berlin and Lisbon is really poorly connected by train, so it’ll have to be postponed to later in the year. Mh, no, slow gigging isn’t exactly simple. If you’d like to invite me for anything on the way between Germany and Portugal, we can try to organize a little tour.
31.05: Iboat, Bordeaux, FR 🇫🇷
01.06: Octofolies Festival, FR 🇫🇷
Thanks to these promoters for sitting together to work out travel share!
15.06: Dans An Diaoul, Bretagne, FR 🇫🇷
La fameuse sauterie du père Müller ! Hâte de revoir toute la famille :)
30.06: TBC, UK 🇬🇧
07.07: TBA, UK 🇬🇧
30/31.08: TBA, BEL 🇧🇪
21.09: TBA, Berlin, DE 🇩🇪
If you know you know <3